Category: Uncategorized

The title of this site does not reflect on the writing abilities of Mike, who is a fourteen year-old blogger who has a way with writing frank and simple entries. No he is not neurotic, at least he certainly does not give one this impression. Maybe it is we the reading public who is all suffering some nasty neurosis, and it is Mike’s goal to write about the sometimes wild and crazy world in which we live.

Basically this blog is written to tell the reader about a typical life of a teenager who hates school but loves music. Nothing more and nothing less. If one believes the long list of aesthetics on the sidebar, then one would quickly conclude that he is infatuated with all
kinds of music. But it is strange that if this were so then music rarely appears in any of his entries. Except some blurbs about a marching band, so we can guess that he probably plays a musical instrument. But this is only guessing. In fact, reading between the lines in this blog is often guess work. Good and challenging guesswork that is.

As far as the style and colors, nice and simple but nothing exceptional. There seems to be some problem with the archive file colors, as they are nearly impossible to read. Maybe you need to look into this Mike?

It is always nice to see that the youth today likes to express itself through the writing of blogs. These works are often down to earth and straight forward, just like the blog called Neurosis. This is an okay site, so come and visit, especially if you are a teenager looking for others with similar high-school experiences to share. Or just another adult like myself passing by. Mike, you are not neurotic. Keep on writing anyway.Reservations

With a title and domain like Violent Nation, I really had no idea what to expect. Anything from some type of a hate crime expert to a misunderstood teenager crossed my mind as to who I was going to be reading about as I began my journey through this weblog.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this weblog was one belonging to a somewhat average guy who just has an impeccable flair for being able to describe a situation and make the reader feel as if you’re right there. The first post I read about the drama involved in delivering pizzas set a great tone for the rest of the site, because I knew the author, either consciously or otherwise, made an effort to make the readers that stumble upon this site feel like they’re right there during each entry.

Be sure to check out the violentnation.com soundtrack at the bottom of the site. You can create your own listening music while reading through the weblog and/or the rest of the extensive site. It’s setup just like the cool keyboards from about 10 years ago where you could loop your favorite drum sound with the likes of a synthesizer and get yourself going with some pretty cool music that you, uh, “created”.

Other than the soundtrack feature, there’s a ton of different sections throughout the site. There are TONS of photos, some fun flash presentation-type things that the author’s created, song lyrics, poetry, essays, and the list of other parts of the site seems to have continued to grow since the beginning of violentnation.com.

After finishing reviewing the entire site, I’m still sitting here tapping my foot to the sounds of my very cool lounge-ish music I’ve created with that crazy little soundtrack feature, and would highly suggest making your way to this site – it’s not really a Violent Nation.

violentnation.com

Mojtaba Akhtari is an Iranian medical doctor living in London, from where he posts to his Letters from London blog hosted on Blogspot.

Mojtaba looks a lot out of some library window, where he spends many hours studying, and generally lets his eye wander over the London skyline. The scenery he sees is of course pure Londontown, the green dome of the Imperial War Museum near his flat being a prominent landmark (which places Mojtaba’s perch on good ol’ Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ).

Letters from London uses a simple template — one-column reading area with yellow background on a light gray page. There is only one very short archive, the blog being not even a month old. There are no links or any other distinguishing marks on the page.

Motjaba generally goes over his daily life, which evolves around reading, working in the hospital, performing procedures, planning for visits with friends and such. He seems to be happily married to a wife who treats him to delicious vegetarian dishes. He sounds quite at peace with what should be a hectic schedule, because apparently he is a junior doctor, maybe just a “houseman”, as the Brits call young doctors doing their specialty and working nonstop 130-hour weeks (including weekends of course).

The writing could use some polishing, but the tone is relaxed, attuned I guess to the pace of a daily routine well under control. Motjaba does not wrestle with existential dilemmas so prevalent in so many personal blogs. He’s not crying his heart out over lost or broken liaisons and he’s not hurling his whining and moaning upon readers, just like your average “I’m-here-to-tell-you-how-shitty-the-world-is” personal blogger. Letters from London is maybe unexciting, but steady and well-balanced.

Motjaba’s posts read like a short story. This is perhaps the blog’s strong point. On a technical note, the good doctor should get used to inserting a space after punctuation — space after a full stop, space after a comma or semicolon. This will make his page a lot clearer and easier to read.

I liked Letters from London. This is one honest, level-headed blog. Letters From London

This is the complete site. There’s the weblog, which is quite mandatory for submitting your site to The Weblog Review, and you can learn even more about Kim through her “about” section, her writings, and the different photos she has displayed through her site.

It seems as if it’s been just recently that Kim’s acquired the domain name she now uses (afrochic.net). This site just struck me as a place that needed its own domain name. With the attitude and self-admission of being a “heartless bitch with no conscience”, you don’t get the feeling that she should be anything but her own individual place out there on the World Wide Web.

Ah, the writing – the entire reason behind why I visited this site. What goes on at afrochic.net? A little bit of everything. Kim’s in school and is an aspiring writer/poet/filmmaker. We definitely get a wonderful taste of the writing portion of that through the weblog. She covers things from her family life to current events to shopping to the current state that the music industry is in. And the best part is that it’s all done with wonderful sentence structure and all that good jazz. The writing here makes me laugh at times, and also makes me think at times. It’s a great variety of writing that makes this weblog stand out.

Is God gay? Kim’s got quite the convincing stance on this. While it may sound a bit silly, she’s got some very valid points here!

Design-wise, I’ve never been a big fan of a site that uses this type of format. There’s a splash page that includes all of the author’s cliques and rings which she belongs to, and then when you click on the “enter” graphic, another window pops up containing everything in the site. Kim, the author, does use some really bright and cheery artwork, however, which offset the format of the site enough to make me forget about it after a while. Even though the site is done with a bright orange background, it’s still not too hard to look at while reading through the weblog.

Overall, I liked this site a lot. I liked reading what Kim had to say, and didn’t ever get the impression that she was just typing away to see herself throw words up on a screen. Sometimes the writing didn’t pertain to me at all, and I had no idea what or who she was talking about, but that’s just something that happens with weblogs. I had a feeling of connection and of genuine interest in this weblog, and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

afrochic

Bust out the corn dogs and the forties and lets have ourselves a Big Picnic. (Blatantly stolen and modified from their site) But seriously, take the time out of the day to visit Big Picnic. Why you ask? For a number of reasons.

First we have the stories that are posted. They range in content categories from News to A & E to Tech to Comics and more. Each post is either backed by a fare amount of knowledge or the main poster (JNelsonW) is very good at feeding us BS. My guess is the former of the two.

The site is powered by Post Nuke which is an open source CMS. JNelsonW takes full advantage of all the features of the CMS including having notes about the posts, extended entries, free registration for the site, allowing others to comment on the site and submit their own news. Most people do not use the Nuke software to the fullest, but like the posts that are written – the knowledge is shown.

The design of the site is rather interesting to say the least. Of course when I think of Big Picnic I think of grass. So what better than to have a picture of blades of grass with the words Big Picnic across them as the logo? But then the site goes into a slate color with white text which doesn’t seem to flow with the “picnic” idea. However, given that a logo has very little to do with the sites ability to perform, it is nothing to worry about. Over all the design works for the site.

Big Picnic really is just that, a Big Picnic. Fun times can be had while reading this site, and you can even partake in it yourself by registering for an account. Make sure you check out the Big Picnic for an enjoyable day.
Big Picnic